When her mother leaned to her, with the same "Wasn't it splendid?" Imogen found relief in answering firmly, "I thought it insolent."
"Insolent? That adagio bit?"—Jack, evidently, had seen her symptoms of distress.—"Why, I thought it a most exquisite interpretation."
"So did I," said Mrs. Upton rather sadly from behind.
"It hurt me, mama dear," said Imogen. "But then I know this symphony so well, love it so much, that I perhaps feel intolerantly toward new readings."
As the next, and last, movement began, she heard Rose under her breath yet quite loud enough, murmur, "Bunkum!" The ejaculation was nicely modulated to reach her own ears alone.
With a deepened sense of alienation, Imogen sat enveloped by the unheard thunders of the final movement. Yes, Rose would hide her impertinence from others' ears. Imogen had noted the growing tenderness, light and playful, between her mother and the girl. Behind her, presently, she rustled in all her silks as she leaned to whisper something to Mrs. Upton—"You will come and have tea with me,—at Sherry's,—all by ourselves?" Imogen caught.
Her mother was not the initiator, but her acquiescence was an offense, and to Imogen, acutely conscious of the whispered colloquy, each murmur ran needles of anger into her stretched and vibrating nerves. At last she turned eyes portentously widened and a prolonged "Ss-s-s-h" upon them.
"People oughtn't to whisper," Jack smiled comprehendingly at her, when they reached the end of the symphony; the rest of the movement having been occupied, for Imogen, with a sense of indignant injury.
She had caught his attention, then, with her reproof. There was sudden balm in his sympathy. The memory of the unnoticed tear still rankled in her, but she was able to smile back. "Some people will always be the money-lenders in the temple."
At once the balm was embittered. She had trusted too much to his sympathy. He flushed his quick, facile flush, and she was again at the confines of the shadow. Really, it was coming to a pass when she could venture no least criticism, even by implication, of her mother.